“The pears were an accident,” I said, even though I knew this wasn’t about that.

“You know what I’m talking about.” Her voice was wavering, like she wanted to increase the volume but couldn’t on account of her parents upstairs. “Why’d you have to interrupt my dad?”

“Because you deserve to be treated better.”

She shook her head at me. “That’s not your concern.”

“Someone needs to stand up for you since you aren’t doing it yourself, even though you can and do otherwise.”

“Don’t.”

The word was a warning. A start of a sentence but also the punctuation at the end of this topic of conversation.

She sighed. “Look, what happened in the kitchen earlier, with the cookies…” She took a breath. “That was a mistake. It can’t happen again, and it can’t affect what we’re trying to do here.”

Oof. My chest hurt.

What if I can’t help defending you, wanting you to have more?

As if she read my mind (she probably read it on my face), she reached a hand toward me (but no contact) and said, “You help me the most by getting rid of Hongbo.”

I nodded. That I could do. I’d find my way back, focus on the assignment so that, like always, my decisions would be made by recalling information, analyzing the situation, and executing. Formulaic, not driven by emotion, yeesh.

She stood. “Come on, let’s go set up the Christmas tree. Maybe if we make this place more festive it’ll change the mood.”

“Don’t you want to do that with your parents?”

“They hate it—I usually do it alone.”

I know what that’s like.

Jing-Jing pushed away from the table and I followed her to the den.

She opened the box and dumped the contents on the floor. Fake branches, ornaments in ziplock bags, free-floating tinsel, and one massive ball of lights fell out.

“Yikes.” How late were we planning on staying up?

She forced a short laugh. “I know, sorry.”

We constructed the tree in silence, with Jing-Jing untangling shit as I stuck fake branches into the plastic trunk.

The bedroom door opened slowly and creakily, like the sneaking culprit was trying to mask the sound.

We shared a hopeful look.

And then, as if a switch flipped, she grabbed a paper lantern (the kind my family also used to make out of construction paper, glue, and scissors) and threw it at me. Catching on, I laughed and declared, “Oh, it is so on.”

But before I could retaliate, she hurled, like, twenty things at me (all soft, but still, quite the onslaught).

Between the laughter, we flung tinsel and streamers and felt ornaments at each other, some of it landing on the tree but most of it hitting our targets.